I’ve listened to quite a bit of Vilayat Khan, and while he does have amazing technique, I find the overall musical product absolutely not consistently better than his peers such as Ravi Shankar, the late Nikhil Banerjee, or even far younger sitarists such as Shubendra Rao or Nayan Ghosh [!] …

I find the entire Vilayat Khan family gharana bangs on the chikari strings so forcefully & frequently, so out of balance with the melody notes, I find myself hoping the alap portion will end quickly to end the worst of the imbalance. Along with this concern is what I find the lack of phrasing, the lack of usage of space – for all the talk of bringing vocal khyal ang to sitar, his sitar phrases have all too few pauses akin to a vocalist taking a breath – rather a phrase will conclude followed immediately by a new phrase, unless perhaps he demarcating alap sections with a mohra, where he does pause, but then sometimes the mohra is played so forcefully with regards to preceding alapa it is not musical … I find the meends often do not serve as part of a larger, melodic vision or elaboration of the raga, but rather are meends done for sake of the meend itself … The frequent throat-clearing captured on tape during some of his concerts [vad i helvete, Erskine?] – etcetera, 16 februari 2000.

I’ll staunchly defend that no ICM composition I’ve ever heard has ever come even remotely close to the depth, beauty, complexity, variation of motif, logical and mathemetical complexity, of many of the compositions of the immense Baroque genius, Johann Sebastian Bach. Most ICM compositions, to my ear, are simplistic, one-dimensional, devoid of any significant thematic variation, and if indeed these compositions cannot stand on their own strength without elaborate ornamentation (of alleged unrepresentable nature), then they are indeed very poor compositions. Of course, given the complete lack of harmony and the vast permutational space of musical creation which is denied of ICM by that significant shortcoming, perhaps the emperor does need something fancy frills and lace to cover up a bit …